RARE NATIVE PLANTS FERNALD 387 



As a last illustration of what science has lost and is helplessly 

 losing I will mention a little wintergreen whose ancient home has 

 literally become a graveyard. Throughout the vast order Ericales 

 or heaths, a world-wide group, the anthers are erect, except in Pyrola 

 and its allies. In this group, differing from the others in its 

 herbaceous instead of woody habit, the anthers in bud are erect 

 and extrorse (opening outward) but in the opening flower they be- 

 come inverted so that their morphologically basal pores are at the 

 top, the morphologically uppermost points at the bottom, and their 

 dehiscence is introrse instead of extrorse. All over the Northern 

 Hemisphere Pyrola is consistent in reversing the direction of its an- 

 thers; but, apparently, it used to have them as in the ancient woody 

 heaths. In 1860 the late Coe F. Austin discovered on a wooded 

 slope in the Delaware Valley a most amazing Pyrola^ which he de- 

 scribed as P. oxypetala. In leaves and petals it is unlike other species 

 of the genus but, strangest of all, it has the mature anthers erect. 

 Unfortunately, this remarkable and only known link between modern 

 Pyrola and the ancient heaths has never been rediscovered; but 

 fortunately, Dr. Austin preserved good material of it. Many bota- 

 nists have sought it, and I have personally had a try for it. The 

 locality best fitting Austin's account is now^ a suburban cemetery, with 

 carefully scraped and groomed banks and landscaped effects, with 

 everything possible done to discourage a native plant or animal of 

 fastidious habits and specialized requirements.^ The people of the 

 neighboring city do not care; they never heard of Pyrola oxypetala. 

 It has nothing to do with their lives, and w^here it originally grew 

 they have a conventionalized or standardized area in w^hich to lie 

 after their earthly careers are finished. Pyrola oxypetala would have 

 seemed an insignificant "weed" to the landscape architect who wanted 

 foreign plants put in its place. 



Eight here is the most serious problem for those who regret the 

 unnecessary destruction of our sensitive and retiring species of 

 plants and animals. For it has been too much the custom to overlook 

 the fact that the oldest and most interesting of animals and plants 

 are what I have called the fugitive aristocrats. These are the rare 

 and ecologically most retiring and specialized species, known only to 

 a few special students of a region; and anything which upsets the 

 equilibrium to which, through millions and millions of years, they 

 have gradually become adjusted, is fatal to them. If the experi- 

 enced botanist were first consulted, no conventional planner of man- 

 made landscape and unintentional destroyer of these inconspicuous 



« In the case of Pyrola, dependence on mycorrhiza. 

 197855—40 26 



